Characteristics

When used to refer to an aesthetic attitude, Classicism invokes those characteristics normally associated with the art of antiquity—harmony, clarity, restraint, universality, and idealism. Because of the high regard accorded to ancient art, “classic” is sometimes used to mean that the example is the best of its type (e.g., a classical example of a villa). By extension, “classic” is also sometimes used to refer to a stage of development that some historians and aestheticians have identified as a regular feature of what they have seen as the cyclical development of all styles. In such schemes the Classical phase is the moment at which the style is at its fullest and most harmonious expression; this phase is generally thought to follow a primitive or less completely realized phase and to precede a “mannered,” “baroque,” or “decadent” phase in which the style loses its original forcefulness and is sometimes meaninglessly elaborated. Phases of Western art history that intentionally imitate the antique example directly are usually called Neoclassical.

In the Western tradition, periods of Classicism share a reverence for the models of antiquity, but they may vary widely in their interpretation and application of those models, depending on the period and the genre (such as painting, architecture, literature, and music). In the visual arts, besides the general qualities associated with the aesthetic attitude of Classicism, classicizing artists tend to prefer somewhat more specific qualities; these include line over colour, straight lines over curves, frontality and closed compositions over diagonal compositions into deep space, and the general over the particular. Nevertheless, whenever artists have referred to antiquity, they have carried the problems and ideals of their own times with them, interpreting in different ways what antiquity had to offer. Classicism has historically been seen as one of any number of polar opposites. These polarities may designate aesthetic or critical oppositions (classic versus romantic, classic versus avant-garde), or they may indicate historical oppositions (in the following, the first term of each pair is considered to embody the aesthetic characteristics of Classicism: Renaissance versus Gothic, High Renaissance versus Mannerist, and Poussinist versus Rubenist).

Architecture and the visual arts

David, marble sculpture by Michelangelo, 1501–04; in the Accademia, Florence. 5.5 metres high.Peter Poulides—Stone/Getty ImagesThe Classical tradition was not extinguished during the Middle Ages, but because of the resolute efforts of 15th- and 16th-century Italians to absorb the Classicism of antiquity, the Italian Renaissance was the first period of thoroughgoing Classicism after antiquity. The 15th-century architect Leon Battista Alberti equated Classicism and beauty and defined beauty in architecture as “the harmony and concord of all the parts achieved by following well-founded rules [based on the study of ancient works] and resulting in a unity such that nothing could be added or taken away or altered except for the worse.” He said that the “sculptor should endeavour as much as possible to express by both the deportment . . . and bearing . . . of the figure, the life and character . . . of the person.” In painting, artists were to choose subjects that glorified man, use figures suited to the actions being represented, and imitate the appearance of actions in the natural world. In the visual arts the Classicism of the Renaissance is epitomized in Michelangelo’s David (1501–04; Accademia, Florence), in Raphael’s portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (1516; Louvre, Paris), and in Donato Bramante’s Palazzo Caprini (c. 1510; Rome; destroyed).

Oath of the Horatii, oil painting by Jacques-Louis David, 1784; in the Louvre, Paris.Giraudon/Art Resource, New YorkBy the middle of the 18th century, Classicism was being attacked from two directions. The authoritative equation of Classicism and beauty was challenged by longings for the sublime, so that romantic fantasies, suggestive allusions, and bizarre inventions came to be more highly valued than classicist clarity and dignity. Likewise, the accepted superiority of Roman antiquity was being challenged by supporters of Greece. The historian of ancient art Johann Winckelmann, for example, saw in Greek sculpture “a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” and admonished artists to imitate nature by imitating the Greeks, for only they have revealed man’s greatness—a classicist doctrine translated from Rome to Greece. In sculpture this program was followed particularly by Antonio Canova. In painting, on the other hand, Jacques-Louis David reestablished the formal standards of Raphael and of Augustan Rome and turned Classicism into a tool that served the new exhortative and eulogizing subjects painters were called on to render (e.g., Oath of the Horatii [1784; Louvre]). Restraint, grandeur, and simplicity, along with precise depiction and close congruence of clear form and noble content, continued to constitute the Classicism in many of the works of such later artists as Pablo Picasso, Aristide Maillol, and Henry Moore.

After the mid-18th century, Classicism in architecture became connected with rationalism. Various Neoclassicisms were spawned by reverence for Greek, Roman, or Renaissance models. By the early 20th century, classicistic demands for harmony, proportion, and the congruence of parts were being applied to new technology to give order to many styles. The architects Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe exemplified two different ways of adapting Classical stylistic characteristics to modern problems and materials.

The other arts

Periods of Classicism in literature and music have generally coincided with the Classical periods in the visual arts. In literature, for instance, the first major revival of Classicism also occurred during the Renaissance, when Cicero’s prose was especially imitated. France in the 17th century developed a rich and diversified Classicism in literature, as it had also in the visual arts. The dramatists Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine, together with the philosophers Blaise Pascal and René Descartes, were particularly important. In England, Classicism in literature arose later than in France and reached its zenith in the 18th-century writings of John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller were major figures in the German Classical literary movement. In the early 20th century, T.S. Eliot and proponents of the New Criticism were sometimes considered classicists because of their emphasis on form and discipline.

In music the great Classical period arose in the late 18th century and was dominated by composers of the German-speaking area of Europe: Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Christoph Gluck, and the young Ludwig van Beethoven. Their music is polished, refined, and melodic. In their era, instrumental music became more important than vocal music for the first time in history. Intense interest in such music and in regularized “Classical” form led to the standardization of symphony orchestras, chamber ensembles, pianos, and various compositional forms.